Kick Off Your Weekend with the John Butler Trio at Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas on Friday Night

As you can probably imagine, a guy named John Butler fronts the John Butler Trio. He launched his musical career busking in the streets of his native Australia. And as a touring musician, he’s become known for his lap-steel talents and employing a wide variety of pedals and amps to distort his guitars. But despite the trio’s other two members changing over the years—Butler’s currently joined by drummer Grant Gerathy and bassist Byron Luiters—with the singer-songwriter-guitarist remaining constant, the Australian band’s penchant for anthemic tunes with socially conscious lyrics, dynamic live shows and roots-rock jamming have never subsided. The John Butler Trio (below, doing “Funky Tonight”) released their sixth studio full-length album, Flesh & Blood (stream it below), last year, and it finds the frontman “occupying a more introspective and nostalgic headspace than he has on previous outings,” per AllMusic. “Butler has always been a cerebral gent, although one prone to crafting stadium sized activist anthems like ‘Earthbound Child’ and ‘Fire in the Sky,’ but there’s a more settled vibe to Flesh & Blood that suggests a possible sea change.” Don’t miss them on Friday night at Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas. Expect to see a talented, road-tested band playing plenty of original material, with some covers mixed in, doing what they do best: laying it down live. And as an added bonus, you can also expect Anderson East, who, steeped in Southern soul and R&B, opens the show.